Major League Baseball strikes out with fan attendance, again

Eben Novy-WilliamsBloomberg

Major League Baseball attendance dropped 4 percent this year, continuing a steady decline for "America's Pastime." It's the lowest league-wide attendance since 2003 and the largest single-season drop in a decade.

What does that mean for a team's bottom line? Bloomberg News crunched some numbers to get a better understanding. While some clubs saw a jump in attendance, 17 of the 30 franchises sold fewer tickets than they did last year. Using average ticket prices from Team Marketing Report, that comes to about $93.7 million in lost ticket revenue in 2018.

Teams with the largest drops include the Miami Marlins (down $24.5 million) and the Toronto Blue Jays (down $22.9 million). (The Marlins recently changed the way they report attendance, which could account for part of the decline.) The defending-champion Houston Astros — with a projected $23.2 million boost in sales — were a big winner.

With a few exceptions, gate receipts make up one-fifth to one-third of teamwide revenue, according to Forbes' annual valuations. Some teams rely on such sales more than others, depending on their local media rights and status in league-wide revenue sharing. The Blue Jays, for example, had $274 million in overall revenue off $83 million in ticket sales, so a $22.9 million drop is a significant loss.

Poor attendance can also have a ripple effect on team revenue. Assuming each of those missing fans would have purchased two beers and a hot dog during the game, MLB teams lost another $47.2 million in food and beverage sales. That's a conservative estimate, but MLB teams report attendance as tickets sold, not actual turnstile numbers. Other potential profits, such as parking and merchandise sales, were also omitted from these calculations.